So, this is my life.

Week one: starting a workout from scratch

Making the decision to put your body– one lumpy and bumpy and not at all accustomed to being moved in any manner other than from one nice cushy surface to another, was a scary one. But if you recall, I posted a long time ago about struggling with my weight. Over the past year, through painstaking effort that involved limited carbs and sadness, I lost 36 lbs and 36 inches over my body. And while that was a very happy loss, and I was proud of what I accomplished, knowing I still had 45 lbs to go to reach my “recommended healthy body Weight” per the bmi charts and my doctor, made me want to just give up and eat a cake right there.

I had been doing the low carb thing, and while it had been successful on its first iteration years ago, and my husband was dropping weight like it was going out of style and looking like some kind of GQ model, I was losing at this turtle pace where I would sometimes go weeks without any movement on the scale. I was miserable, too, because all of the high fat foods made me feel pretty gross. I wanted to eat bread, and pretzels, and the occasional low fat item that would not make me think I was screwing with my macros.

Enter Oprah. I saw her pitching Weight Watchers, and I had a few friends that were doing the plan with success. Their enthusiasm for eating anything but tracking everything they put in their mouths seemed like the kind of control I needed.

In my first month, I lost 5 lbs. I felt good, too, because I could eat fruit again. And grains. And I could do things in moderation– that worked for me. But I wasn’t really losing weight in a way that was making me feel good about myself and my process.

I needed to do something drastic. Something I’ve literally never done before. I needed to make a commitment to a hard core exercise program and actually do it. This is my body on the day I started my program. I contrasted it to where I was a year before to remind myself of all I had already done. Go me!

I made the bold and possibly insane decision to do 21 day fix. This skinny and ripped bitch says enthusiastic things like “you can do it!” And “don’t quit” and writes inspirational messages on a blackboard in her workout space. There’s a nice lady named Kat that does all the modied workouts that I do with her, and literally I thank God for Kat, because I’m dying every day and I have only done this for 7 days.

Autumn tells you a bunch of bullshit like “it doesn’t get easier, you get better” and actually I think what happens is, you just die.

My daughter actually asked me if I was going to die when I was doing the “total cardio fix” and I said maybe. I don’t really want to lie to her.

The first few days I had a hard time walking around, and the pain was real. My legs hurt so bad that it took all I had to convince them to move on command, like walking up and down the stairs or just getting up from a sitting position. But at the end of the week I could get into a size 12 dress, and I felt really good about that. The scale didn’t budge, but my mindset was there: I can do anything for 21 days, right?